August 13, 2025 • 34 mins
Humberto provides a deep dive on US immigration.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
00:00 Immigration Song
04:39 A Nationalist movement
07:30 Humberto's story of immigration
10:49 Federal measures & rollbacks
16:04 Federal funding & detainment centers
23:31 The Alien Enemies Act
27:26 Birthright citizenship
33:22 Stories from immigrants seeking safety in the United States
49:03 How does this psychologically affect vulnerable people?
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August 13, 2025
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
00:00 Immigration Song
04:39 A Nationalist movement
07:30 Humberto's story of immigration
10:49 Federal measures & rollbacks
16:04 Federal funding & detainment centers
23:31 The Alien Enemies Act
27:26 Birthright citizenship
33:22 Stories from immigrants seeking safety in the United States
49:03 How does this psychologically affect vulnerable people?
Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
Email: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contact
Website: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com
Merch: https://psychologyinseattle-shop.fourthwall.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/
Facebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
August 13, 2025
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, So this is chapter two in Umberto Castaneta's
Deep Dive on immigration and psychology. In the last episode,
we went through the history of the world in part one,
particularly of the United States, and two non experts on
history and immigration meandered our way through the surface level details,
(00:24):
but it gives us context. I think that's important, and
especially in the patron zone. We talked about the psychology
of transgenerational transmission of issues and the effects of otherizing
people and harming people, and so we have set ourself
up for immigration of today. So you're going to start
(00:45):
us off by talking about that. So take it away, brutal.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Great. So this is Liverpool.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I've been here once before for twenty years. Do you
know what these lyrics are? No, they're not set in
the recording. I don't know why, but they're listed as
the lyrics. The two opening lines for ah come from
the land on the ice and snow. Yeah, yeah, immigrant song.
(01:13):
This song is interesting. I love this song always, but
I don't listen to the lyrics. So we come from
the land of ice and snow, from the midnight sun
where hot springs blow. The hammer of the gods will
drive our ships to New lands to fight the Horde,
singing and crying bahaa, I am coming on, we sweep
(01:35):
with threshing or our.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Only goal will be the western shore.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, whether talking about Scandinavians coming to England, right, It's
so interesting because when I grew up, Led Zeppelin was
listened to by the rockers and the stoners and the
cool kids, you know, but I had no idea just
how d.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
And d nerdy.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, they literally wrote songs about toki and stuff. If
they were around today, they would be like playing dust.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And halls more.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Most of them are still with us in terms of
being alive, but they, yeah, they're so nerdy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's interesting to me because the song is called the
immigrant song. Right, my perspective, if you're like, hey, Bart,
don't write an immigrant song, I might be like, you know,
I came and it was hard, but I slowly believe.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But this perspective.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Right, right, this perspective is like we're coming to conquer, right,
And it is in fact, in the last chapter you
were talking about this, like this philosophy of the individual
will conquer and we'll go and we'll make this land
our own and things like that, and there's something powerful
about that and at the same time, I think it
also sets a tone. It sets a tone of like
(02:49):
we are the dustined ones, We are the ones that
own this place.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Everyone move aside. Here we come.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And as a result, I think it creates an idea
and that identity is powerful, manifest destiny identity. It's one
where the world really is about our story. This is
our story. Everyone else is just like bit players. And
what it does at the same time is it it
makes it so that the other countries, the other peoples,
(03:18):
are less than and it causes an imbalance. Now I
love the song. I have nothing against the song. The
sentiment is fine. It's just interesting because I think that
that like manifest destiny, force of that song is something
that we're going to see.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, a lot of it goes further back in history,
you know, the Viking or the Scandinavian conquerors that they
actually there are several waves of it in you know,
throughout Western Europe and including England. But it was long
enough ago, and it's white on white crime, so it's
easier to go along with in terms of one's fantasies.
(03:54):
But if someone wrote Immigrant Song and part two and
it's about the English coming to North America and or
about Christopher Columbus, if you wrote a song about that,
of like raping and pillaging and killing and enslaving and
extracting and harming and genocide. I mean, the entire people
(04:15):
that lived there were wiped out within a few generations,
you know, because of raping and killing and also disease.
But you know, if you wrote a song like that,
it would be less fun to sing along with exactly.
But so along those lines, we can think about the
people that were living in England that were being raped
and killed and harmed and enslaved, and it's not so
(04:37):
fun anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Not so fun.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Okay, So this takes us to what's been happening in
the last technically twelve years, but not twelve years, because
he had four then we had four, so eight nine years,
let's say, but more specifically in the last half a year.
So Trump is not an isolated person. He has a
(05:02):
whole movement around him. And this is one that has
been characterized by a lot of people, certainly including myself,
as a nationalist movement.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Many would call it a white nationalist movement. I would
call it that as well.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But at the very least it is a nationalist movement,
one which looks at the United States as the greatest
country in the world and one that has to be
protected where it's borders and culture have to be protected
from the unwashed, dirty masses of the rest of the world.
And there are people in his administration that are very,
very vehemently opposed to cultural and racial mixing. Now, so
(05:41):
with that in light, the first thing that started happening
is the militarization and border closings. So there was a
proclamation one eight eighty six declared a national emergency. So
this is interesting, right because it's not just like, hey,
we have a problem, like it's a national emergency. And
(06:03):
the Executive Order fourteen one sixty seven deployed around ten
thousand troops and budgeted about three hundred and almost four
hundred million dollars in military support for the border. There
were also national defense areas decreed, and it also accelerated
the wall construction of seventy million dollars for seven miles
(06:25):
and advanced surveillance.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
To drive the encounters down.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Okay, so all of this has been happening since he
took office this second time.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Now, you might wonder why didn't this all happen in
the first term and so forth.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well, I honestly think that in the first term he
didn't have enough power. In this time, he has enough
control over enough branches, including the judicial branch and everyone
around him that essentially what they want to do they
can mostly do.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Mostly without opposition.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So right off the bat, this became a national emergency,
all these executive orders. So I started feeling this right away.
When he won the election, I.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Was like wow, kind of in shock.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But when it started and immediately they started putting all
these things into place, I went from thinking, oh man,
this is gonna be tough to actually started feeling afraid
because I am Hispanic. And even though it's like, well, yeah, yeah,
but I'm not on illegal I'm work in the fields,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I became a citizen.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know, It's funny when I was in high school,
I wasn't a citizen. When I was in high school,
I was a Green card holder, and yet back then
I never felt different.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I'd never felt afraid or I was just like, yeah,
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Just remind people of your story, just very briefly. Yeah,
you were born in Columbia or in your so you're
born in Columbia. Your parents come to New York or
Massachusetts to work because your dad was a child psychologist,
and then you went back to Columbia when so you
lived in the New York Massachusetts area for a couple
(08:08):
of two or three years, and then you went back
to Columbia, lived in Columbia, and then your mom actually
came to the Seattle area with her new husband, your stepdad,
and then you came to live with her in the
Seattle area when you were fifteen, and you've lived in
the States ever since then. Yeah, and you came when
(08:28):
you were fifteen, that was nineteen ninety, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And then you know, my mom went through the Both
my dad and my mom came here on likely student
visas at the time because they were going to college
in Massachusetts. They already had a graduate or they had an.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Undergrad degree from Columbia, but they were doing graduate studies.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, visa meaning you're here temporarily to go.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, either that or worker visas whatever. But they were
here legally, is the point.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think you have to emphasize legally because it's funny.
Legally and illegally for whatever reason, sound very similar.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, they were here legally ill illegal, I mean legally yeah, no,
they were here Lee, And that's true.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Actually, it's kind of now that you say, it's kind
of hard.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Lawfully maybe lawfully or they were herefully, they were here
not illya.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So then my mom goes through the process and becomes
a citizen. I forget what year, but you know, at
some point she became a citizen. On the other hand,
when I moved here, I was fifteen, and so I
moved here because you know, your parent who's a citizen,
can request you to come to the country, so she did.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I came.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I got a green card at some point. So when
I was going to school here, I was going to
high school. And then when I started college, I was
not a citizen.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I became.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I became a citizen in nineteen ninety six. I went
through the whole process. I did the tests and had
to study, learn a few things whatnot. I did the
whole thing, and I became a citizen. I've been a
citizen now for almost thirty years, and I never once
ought about it much.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I was never worried about it.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I was never you know, in fact, if anything, the
only thing I ever worried about was actually going back
to Colombia at that time because I was afraid they
would like conscript me into the army because I never served,
you know that kind of thing in Colombia.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Never worried once about here my status.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, when this started happening, I was like, oh, I
don't know I was I wasn't always a citizen.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
My brother was a naturalized citizen from legal residents, you know.
Uh So, but I was like, what the hell, how
how far is this going to go?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, and you expressed fears of relatives that would be
deported or would get caught up at the border, you know,
if they went back to Columbia coming back.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, like a fear like can't we come back? Okay.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So the other the other stuff that starts happening is
there is a there's a public publicly stated goal of
one million deportation per year, one million per year. That's
saying something. It's like, we want to get rid of
a million people per year. It was later brought down
(11:10):
to six hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It doesn't matter. Like there's a ton of people here
and there are daily ice arrest.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Quotas stated to be between twelve and fifteen hundred, Like
they have to arrest that many people every day. It's
like quota they have to meet it. So of course
we started seeing all the stories of ICE and patrols
just going around and like finding people standing around, and.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That also started worrying me.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I'm like, I don't know, I don't necessarily look super
you know, waspy, So should I not stand around at
a home depot like I don't know what? And of
course we live in technically a I don't know an
area that I should feel safer in. But actually, within
(11:52):
two weeks ago or three weeks ago, one of the
teachers in the Lake Washington School District was arrested for
suspicion of being here illegally.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Local politics doesn't have any power necessarily or much power
over the federal agencies that do these sorts of things, right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
All this stuff started happening. And that's the point is
that ICE and all these budgets they at a federal level, right,
So yeah, they start getting deployed all around. Obviously a
lot of the emphasis is going to be in the
border states, but also big states.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Like New York and things like that. Still, it's stressful.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
The other thing is that there start to be some
rollbacks and suspensions of humanitarian things. Humanitarian aspects. For example,
there were refugee admissions. Right people could come here and
seek asylum and say, hey, I'm a refugee from a
certain place, So Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, where there were
(12:51):
immigrants coming from those countries and seeking this refuge and
those were like paused, many of them were revoked. By
the way right now is I don't know if you've
been following, they're in a ridiculously scary situation where the
gangs have taken over. And so to imagine like someone
(13:13):
fleeing from there, they're fleeing from a real hell, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Okay, so all that got paused.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Central American miners, family reunification paroles, safe mobility offices, all
this stuff. Like they've just put an end to all that,
a lot of the things that were in process. If
you had if you had your case under review, it's
like either indefinitely deferred or or terminated. So these these
were steps taken showing to me a lack of care, right, like,
(13:42):
we just don't care if you're not from here, I
don't care. We just don't care, which is also adding
to the fear because it also is not coming from
a place of like, gosh, we have reports that people
lost jobs in Tijuana or whatever, you know, whatever city,
and no, no, no, it's coming from a place of like,
we just don't want these people at all here, and
(14:05):
we will do anything and we don't care what age
they are or whatever. That's scary.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
It's not a very Christian thing to do.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh, definitely not a Christian thing to do, right, Like,
what would Jesus do? It's the opposite.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
He would strap on some body armor and grab a
gun and stand at the border and say fuck you,
stay out exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
You know, it's horrible.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I had a conversation not too long ago with someone
in my life, someone who's a relative actually, and we
were talking about the border and stuff like that, and
I I think I brought up that there was reports
of vigilantes going with their machine guns to stand there
and try to shoot people. And this person, who is
(14:47):
a Christian, said, well, yeah, good now. I was like,
these are families, like they could be shooting women, children. It'say, well,
they shouldn't become here illegally. And I couldn't believe that
this topic would distort their brain like that to say
something so against their firmly held Christian beliefs.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was. It was shocking to me.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And I pointed that out, I said, And later that
day they actually apologized for that thing.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Really they did? Wow? Yeah, what did they say?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
They just said, I, I'm.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Sorry, I didn't really something along the lines of if I
didn't really mean to say that.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
When you say what that they that it's okay to
shoot those people?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Wow? So but unexpected.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It was unexpected anyway, Hey, you just.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Thank them for apologizing because that's a huge deal.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It was a good moment of like, okay, you're not
that far gone into inhumanity.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Peeks, but close call. Like eikes. Even the fact that
we're having that discussion.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
All right, it's take a break, we get back more horribleness.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
What do you say, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
All right, we're back from the break. Continue the horribleness, Bertle.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, okay. So there are other movements that have been
happening thanks to revoke Social Security numbers for folks that
are you know, have questionable legal status. Daily finds as
it seizures for ignoring removal orders so basically like across
(16:29):
the board, we will remove you either. And in fact,
there's been sheriffs that have gone on TV say hey,
remove yourself, like they have an app that they can
go and say like I'm removing myself and they can
self deport. They want folks to leave now or they
will be taken, and of.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Course we saw what happened. Why would there be an app?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
They have a thing so that they can basically take them,
say that they're leaving, and I think maybe that lets
the authorities know where they are at.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So they can go. You know, it's it's I think
it's a little bit of a trick to try.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
To scare them into going to the app.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
But then now they know where they're at.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
What's the incentive.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Oh, the incentive is that maybe the authorities won't come
barging in knocking their door down, I guess.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
But if they're not there, then what's the diff I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, okay. And so then the other thing was, as
you've i'm sure seen all these centers, family detention centers
started getting reopened, private prison contracts going out, like there's
been a forty five billion dollar proposals for private prisons,
use of military basis Guantanamo, of course, use of the
(17:44):
the prison in what is in Salvador. Right, that was
a huge, horrible new development where not only are you
going to get put in prison or deported, you're actually
going to get sent to a prison in a different country.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I don't know if you're getting to this, but a
big tactic goal outcome that they're going for is not
just getting rid of people that they don't want in
this country, but also instilling fear in would be people
that would come. You know, So it's a terrorist tactic
(18:18):
to get people to be so afraid that they won't attempt.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I think you're absolutely right that fear is the normal
number one goal, and then expanding to not only well,
I'm an illegal person here, so I'm afraid, but actually
even if you are a citizen, because you know, they've
taken moves to say like, yeah, I think we can
revoke citizenship and we can do this.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So essentially, if like, if.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
You're not on our plan, if you're not with the party,
you should be afraid.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
There's been tons of reports of overcrowding, inadequate care, limited
legal access.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
There was the horrible situation in Florida where they created.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
The alligator Alca Trass, and one of the people in
the administration was quoted as saying that they were going
to be feeding the alligator. Sixty five million meals, sixty
five million being randomly the number of Latinos living in
this country.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
So when I hear stuff like that, I get worried.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
To be clear, sixty five million legal people in this country.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, well sixty five million.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
The estimate is that there's sixty five million Latino citizens,
green card holders, legal immigrancy.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
In this country.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So when I hear that, that sounds nazis that that
sounds like, oh okay, I see, so some of these
people actually just want a holocaust.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Referencing our previous deep dive that you led, the Neo
Nazi deep dive, I was confused as to why the
patrons voted for that topic to begin with. Overall, there
was like thirty other things, right, I mean, I get
how people would be interested, but it was the most
voted for topic at the time, and I was like, huh.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
And before looking.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Into it, it seemed to me that it was an
extremely fringe You know, you're always going to have the
white supremacistist, the KKK. But in doing the deep dive,
it became clear and evident that it's not only infused
in a lot of institutions and people. It's not just
a KKK. It's not just outwardly white supremacist individuals. There's
(20:27):
a lot of just below the surface, or whispered behind
closed doors, or even just flat out podcasters who are
you know, peddling neo Nazi slogans. Even doing the Hyle
Hitler salute, it illuminated something that I knew was around.
Of course, I know racism is here, but I didn't
(20:50):
realize just how much it was and how it's on
the rise in a lot of ways. You know, it's
appealing to a certain group of people not only to
be racist, which I understand, but to be specifically neo Nazi. Yeah,
to be specifically like promoting Hitler fascism.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
It's fucking bizarre.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I was equally shocked and dismayed, and through this process
in the last six months, definitely that stuff coming to light,
you know, and coming to light now in power. You know,
it's funny when we did that pretty sure that was
during the Biden administration right now, it's during this Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, when we did that, it was pre Elon Musk
Nazi salute.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And get And I understand that.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Some people are still debating whether it was an actual
Nazi salute, and you know, I can't know what was in.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, we can't know if Hitler was actually doing a
Nazi salute or well.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We can't know what was in his heart and mind.
But the conclusion that I came to about Elon Musk
was that of all people on the internet, he knows
the Nazi of course a thing really well because he's
a he's addicted to Twitter and I'm not using that
word lightly, and addicted to four Chan and all that stuff,
(22:10):
and so he lives in that trolly four chan eight
chance or a world. He absolutely knows what a Nazi
salute looks like and has undoubtedly practiced in the mirror,
you know, and knew what he was doing. Now is
he an actual Nazi, I don't know. But should he
have known better or was he doing something intentionally?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
You know?
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Again, and even if he was intending on doing a
Nazi salute, what was he trying to communicate?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
I don't know. Nothing? Good?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, Well, I in the height of ironies.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The folks that would claim that.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Oh no, he just didn't he didn't know better are
the same folks that will claim that he is playing
ninth dimensional chess at all times, running sixty companies in
his sleep, and that he's the ultimate genius of all time.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And he had lamped several overtly neo Nazi posts and
again we don't see that lightly. No Jews will not
replace us the great replacement theory. He's not like our
grandpa that doesn't understand the Internet, and he doesn't understand
the content. He knows the context form, but he's addicted
to that sort of shit. The fact that he's signal
(23:20):
amping at the fact that he is sympathetic to those
point of view points of view is it says something
about what's in his heart.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Then the Alien Enemies Act from seventeen ninety eight was
invoked to fast track Venezuelan removals. The Alien Enemies Act.
Are you familiar with this?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
No?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, I mean why would we? It's from seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It was meant to be like, hey, we have to
we have enemies in this country because guess what we
just had like a revolution and we independent size from
these other folk these and now we're talking about like
at a time and place where Okay, yeah, maybe there's
people trying to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, you're getting at like currently the administration is turning
to that, yeah, as justification.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Fee because they were saying the Venezuela and gangs are
taking over in our countries at risks.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So we got to invoke the Alien Enemies Act from
seventeen ninety eight to remove them.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Right, So the Supreme Court got involved and started putting
some constraints on this, but not enough in my opinion.
Immigration Court shake up. Judges fired directives to dismiss asylum
claims without hearings. So asylum is someone comes to the
border and says, hey, I'm fleeing, I need asylum. Okay,
(24:44):
so you enter a process. During the Biden administration, as
you may recall, they were trying to pass a bill
that would add a whole bunch of judges and a
whole bunch of funding to expedite those asylum claims. This
was defeated because Trump said, don't do it, because they
didn't want any progress made in that front because he
would it would be perceived as political game.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And to be clear, the funding for these systems wasn't
necessarily to let people in.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
It was to.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Give the experts, the officials, the ability to make a decision.
There would be a lot of people that would be
turned away. But what Trump wants is for that question
not even not even to come up right. So it's
not like, hey, well let's put more judges. No, you
know what, dismiss the claims.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
What's again points to that lack.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Of humanity, like we don't care who these people are,
what they're coming from, we don't care.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
We are an individual country, we're not a society.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
We don't care legal aid for on a company children
defunded despite and so like they defunded, the kids come
in to the court, they don't they're just little kids,
and there was a fund to provide them with legal aid.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Like yeah, yeah, take that away.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's like in human totally anti Christian right, Okay, student
visa revocations, we saw the situations where it was like, Okay,
you're speaking out against the administration or against something we
don't agree with, so we're gonna revoke your visa or
we're gonna threaten you to just remove you from the country.
(26:20):
They did an AI driven catch and revoke effort, so
they essentially put AI on a whole bunch of data
to look through and revoke, essentially trying to pull visas
from people based on just data that the later this
was reversed, but they tried to pull fifteen hundred visas
(26:42):
from people. Also, mandatory social media screening was widened. So
the other thing that they started doing was like checking
your Facebook, checking your Instagram, checking your posts, such a
Nazi movie kind of thing to do, like let's see
what you have posted in your I don't know what
accent that is, but imagine that's a Nazi accent. They
(27:03):
drafted a travel band that would affect forty three countries
delay green card processing.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It's essentially a full court press across all these areas,
the border, the visa process, the asylum process, travel from
different countries, as student visas, everything just like across the board.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
They also passed or the Executive Order fourteen one four
one six to zero sought to end birth right citizenship.
So this one started scaring a lot of folks as well,
like myself, where birthright citizenship is you know, time immemorial.
If you are born in this country, you are entitled
(27:47):
to be a citizen in this country. Unless there was
just a few exclusions when this When the birthright citizenship
came into being, there was a lot of debate, as
you can imagine, and there were folks at the time
senators that asked, but wait a minute, what about a
Chinese person. If a Chinese person was born here, would
they become a citizen? And the answer was yes, they
(28:08):
would like oh geez, and of course, because at the
time they wanted it to apply only for a limited
number of types of individuals. But this was fought and passed,
and it was passed to say, no, if you are
born in this country, you are entitled to birthright citizenship.
The only exceptions were if you were born from parents
(28:30):
that were known what do you call it, they were
at war with us basically, So in a situation where
they they're like at war, they're invading the country and
you're born, then that didn't count because you were born
from invaders.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
There was a couple of limitations like that, but they
were very obvious, like specifically things that yeah, I guess
we don't want this. But in every other case, you
were born here, here, So when they sought to end
the birthright citizenship sent a new alarm because it essentially
and of course the argument is like, yeah, well, well
but those the parents are here illegally, their children shouldn't
(29:08):
benefit from that. But at the same time, in the
same breadth, they were also starting to say, plus, we
also want to cancel citizenship for a lot of people. Right,
So that's when someone like me starts getting worried about
relatives I have who were naturalized. You know, they were
they had birthright citizenship. It's like, Okay. The other thing
is in another executive order to name English as the
(29:31):
official language, which normally, you know, normally and any other time,
if this had happened in the nineties or whatever, I
might have been like, oh, yeah, that's cool English, it's
the natural because I probably wouldn't understand the implications right,
But right now the implication is like, yeah, it's this
thing about borders and culture, right, we want to preserve
the culture.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And these are.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Always these dog whistles about like it is the it
is the supremacist stuff. We only want our people. We
want people to look like us, people to talk like us,
people have our culture. We don't want anything else. So
that's another one of those signals making English the official language.
You were saying something interesting, which is the in the
previous episode, you were talking about how when people came
(30:13):
to the country, one of the things is like, hey,
you know, we want to assimilate, right. And in the
song the Neil Diamond Song, there was that line about
like never look back, and the ominous implication might be
like you better assimilate, right. But that's always been sort
of a soft or not always I shouldn't say that,
but I mean, at least in the more recent time
(30:34):
when I came here and stuff, I always felt it
was a softer assumption.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
You see a lot of.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Communities where, you know, I have Asian friends like yourself.
I have other friends whose parents barely speak English and
they you know, I have Korean friends who when I
would go to their house, they would only be speaking Korean, right,
And I never thought, oh, I better report him to
the authorities, or it's just the thing, you know, and
like And in fact, I lament the fact that I
(31:00):
don't speak enough Spanish at home to my girls, you know,
because I want them to learn the language better.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
And I've been doing it more So this.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Kind of move is another thing that gives one pause like, oh, okay,
what is the intention behind that?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, what would that mean to make English the official language?
I assume it would mean that all publications from the
federal government would only be in English, for example. But
you can't have language police invading the Korean home and
telling them that they can't speak Korean in their house.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right. Again, It's one of those things that normally I'd
be like, huh, well, I guess that's weird. I mean,
why are you spending time on that?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
But fine, But in the context of everything, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I see where this is headed.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It's it's a part of a full court press of
white supremacy.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
The other thing is you might have heard about this
the Gold card.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Have you heard of how like they offer They haven't
enacted this, but the idea is that if you pay
five million, you would get this gold card visa that
would give you a legalization path, so essentially by your
citizenship with a lot of money, right, which again I'm
(32:13):
not no, Actually this one seems a little grotesque, but
I could see at different times in different context like hey,
if you're if you want to bring your business to
the country. We'll incentivize that will make it easier for
you to get citizenship or whatever, like okay, But in
the context of everything else, it's like, yeah, I get it.
You just want your little oligarch buddies, no matter who
they are, no matter what criminals they might be, to
(32:34):
come pay for the.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's just gross. Gross.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
So this is all everything I just read was from
an analysis from the first one hundred days. It's not
even like all the latest stuff. But this is what
is triggered communities like my community to be very afraid.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Let's take a break. The rest of this episode will
be for patrons of the podcast. You can listen to
this whole episode and all of our other deep dives. If
you become a patron, if you've been on the border line,
if you will, if you've been thinking about immigrating into patronage,
now is the time. Because we accept all.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
We accept all.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
Otherwise, please take care of yourself because you deserve it.
All right, So this is chapter two in Umberto Castaneta's
Deep Dive on immigration and psychology. In the last episode,
we went through the history of the world in part one,
particularly of the United States, and two non experts on
history and immigration meandered our way through the surface level details,
(00:24):
but it gives us context. I think that's important, and
especially in the patron zone. We talked about the psychology
of transgenerational transmission of issues and the effects of otherizing
people and harming people, and so we have set ourself
up for immigration of today. So you're going to start
(00:45):
us off by talking about that. So take it away, brutal.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Great. So this is Liverpool.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I've been here once before for twenty years. Do you
know what these lyrics are? No, they're not set in
the recording. I don't know why, but they're listed as
the lyrics. The two opening lines for ah come from
the land on the ice and snow. Yeah, yeah, immigrant song.
(01:13):
This song is interesting. I love this song always, but
I don't listen to the lyrics. So we come from
the land of ice and snow, from the midnight sun
where hot springs blow. The hammer of the gods will
drive our ships to New lands to fight the Horde,
singing and crying bahaa, I am coming on, we sweep
(01:35):
with threshing or our.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Only goal will be the western shore.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, whether talking about Scandinavians coming to England, right, It's
so interesting because when I grew up, Led Zeppelin was
listened to by the rockers and the stoners and the
cool kids, you know, but I had no idea just
how d.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
And d nerdy.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, they literally wrote songs about toki and stuff. If
they were around today, they would be like playing dust.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And halls more.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Most of them are still with us in terms of
being alive, but they, yeah, they're so nerdy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's interesting to me because the song is called the
immigrant song. Right, my perspective, if you're like, hey, Bart,
don't write an immigrant song, I might be like, you know,
I came and it was hard, but I slowly believe.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But this perspective.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Right, right, this perspective is like we're coming to conquer, right,
And it is in fact, in the last chapter you
were talking about this, like this philosophy of the individual
will conquer and we'll go and we'll make this land
our own and things like that, and there's something powerful
about that and at the same time, I think it
also sets a tone. It sets a tone of like
(02:49):
we are the dustined ones, We are the ones that
own this place.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Everyone move aside. Here we come.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And as a result, I think it creates an idea
and that identity is powerful, manifest destiny identity. It's one
where the world really is about our story. This is
our story. Everyone else is just like bit players. And
what it does at the same time is it it
makes it so that the other countries, the other peoples,
(03:18):
are less than and it causes an imbalance. Now I
love the song. I have nothing against the song. The
sentiment is fine. It's just interesting because I think that
that like manifest destiny, force of that song is something
that we're going to see.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, a lot of it goes further back in history,
you know, the Viking or the Scandinavian conquerors that they
actually there are several waves of it in you know,
throughout Western Europe and including England. But it was long
enough ago, and it's white on white crime, so it's
easier to go along with in terms of one's fantasies.
(03:54):
But if someone wrote Immigrant Song and part two and
it's about the English coming to North America and or
about Christopher Columbus, if you wrote a song about that,
of like raping and pillaging and killing and enslaving and
extracting and harming and genocide. I mean, the entire people
(04:15):
that lived there were wiped out within a few generations,
you know, because of raping and killing and also disease.
But you know, if you wrote a song like that,
it would be less fun to sing along with exactly.
But so along those lines, we can think about the
people that were living in England that were being raped
and killed and harmed and enslaved, and it's not so
(04:37):
fun anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Not so fun.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Okay, So this takes us to what's been happening in
the last technically twelve years, but not twelve years, because
he had four then we had four, so eight nine years,
let's say, but more specifically in the last half a year.
So Trump is not an isolated person. He has a
(05:02):
whole movement around him. And this is one that has
been characterized by a lot of people, certainly including myself,
as a nationalist movement.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Many would call it a white nationalist movement. I would
call it that as well.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But at the very least it is a nationalist movement,
one which looks at the United States as the greatest
country in the world and one that has to be
protected where it's borders and culture have to be protected
from the unwashed, dirty masses of the rest of the world.
And there are people in his administration that are very,
very vehemently opposed to cultural and racial mixing. Now, so
(05:41):
with that in light, the first thing that started happening
is the militarization and border closings. So there was a
proclamation one eight eighty six declared a national emergency. So
this is interesting, right because it's not just like, hey,
we have a problem, like it's a national emergency. And
(06:03):
the Executive Order fourteen one sixty seven deployed around ten
thousand troops and budgeted about three hundred and almost four
hundred million dollars in military support for the border. There
were also national defense areas decreed, and it also accelerated
the wall construction of seventy million dollars for seven miles
(06:25):
and advanced surveillance.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
To drive the encounters down.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Okay, so all of this has been happening since he
took office this second time.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Now, you might wonder why didn't this all happen in
the first term and so forth.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well, I honestly think that in the first term he
didn't have enough power. In this time, he has enough
control over enough branches, including the judicial branch and everyone
around him that essentially what they want to do they
can mostly do.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Mostly without opposition.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So right off the bat, this became a national emergency,
all these executive orders. So I started feeling this right away.
When he won the election, I.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Was like wow, kind of in shock.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But when it started and immediately they started putting all
these things into place, I went from thinking, oh man,
this is gonna be tough to actually started feeling afraid
because I am Hispanic. And even though it's like, well, yeah, yeah,
but I'm not on illegal I'm work in the fields,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I became a citizen.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know, It's funny when I was in high school,
I wasn't a citizen. When I was in high school,
I was a Green card holder, and yet back then
I never felt different.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I'd never felt afraid or I was just like, yeah,
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Just remind people of your story, just very briefly. Yeah,
you were born in Columbia or in your so you're
born in Columbia. Your parents come to New York or
Massachusetts to work because your dad was a child psychologist,
and then you went back to Columbia when so you
lived in the New York Massachusetts area for a couple
(08:08):
of two or three years, and then you went back
to Columbia, lived in Columbia, and then your mom actually
came to the Seattle area with her new husband, your stepdad,
and then you came to live with her in the
Seattle area when you were fifteen, and you've lived in
the States ever since then. Yeah, and you came when
(08:28):
you were fifteen, that was nineteen ninety, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And then you know, my mom went through the Both
my dad and my mom came here on likely student
visas at the time because they were going to college
in Massachusetts. They already had a graduate or they had an.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Undergrad degree from Columbia, but they were doing graduate studies.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, visa meaning you're here temporarily to go.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, either that or worker visas whatever. But they were
here legally, is the point.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think you have to emphasize legally because it's funny.
Legally and illegally for whatever reason, sound very similar.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, they were here legally ill illegal, I mean legally yeah, no,
they were here Lee, And that's true.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Actually, it's kind of now that you say, it's kind
of hard.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Lawfully maybe lawfully or they were herefully, they were here
not illya.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So then my mom goes through the process and becomes
a citizen. I forget what year, but you know, at
some point she became a citizen. On the other hand,
when I moved here, I was fifteen, and so I
moved here because you know, your parent who's a citizen,
can request you to come to the country, so she did.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I came.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I got a green card at some point. So when
I was going to school here, I was going to
high school. And then when I started college, I was
not a citizen.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I became.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I became a citizen in nineteen ninety six. I went
through the whole process. I did the tests and had
to study, learn a few things whatnot. I did the
whole thing, and I became a citizen. I've been a
citizen now for almost thirty years, and I never once
ought about it much.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I was never worried about it.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I was never you know, in fact, if anything, the
only thing I ever worried about was actually going back
to Colombia at that time because I was afraid they
would like conscript me into the army because I never served,
you know that kind of thing in Colombia.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Never worried once about here my status.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, when this started happening, I was like, oh, I
don't know I was I wasn't always a citizen.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
My brother was a naturalized citizen from legal residents, you know.
Uh So, but I was like, what the hell, how
how far is this going to go?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, and you expressed fears of relatives that would be
deported or would get caught up at the border, you know,
if they went back to Columbia coming back.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, like a fear like can't we come back? Okay.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So the other the other stuff that starts happening is
there is a there's a public publicly stated goal of
one million deportation per year, one million per year. That's
saying something. It's like, we want to get rid of
a million people per year. It was later brought down
(11:10):
to six hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It doesn't matter. Like there's a ton of people here
and there are daily ice arrest.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Quotas stated to be between twelve and fifteen hundred, Like
they have to arrest that many people every day. It's
like quota they have to meet it. So of course
we started seeing all the stories of ICE and patrols
just going around and like finding people standing around, and.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That also started worrying me.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I'm like, I don't know, I don't necessarily look super
you know, waspy, So should I not stand around at
a home depot like I don't know what? And of
course we live in technically a I don't know an
area that I should feel safer in. But actually, within
(11:52):
two weeks ago or three weeks ago, one of the
teachers in the Lake Washington School District was arrested for
suspicion of being here illegally.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Local politics doesn't have any power necessarily or much power
over the federal agencies that do these sorts of things, right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
All this stuff started happening. And that's the point is
that ICE and all these budgets they at a federal level, right,
So yeah, they start getting deployed all around. Obviously a
lot of the emphasis is going to be in the
border states, but also big states.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Like New York and things like that. Still, it's stressful.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
The other thing is that there start to be some
rollbacks and suspensions of humanitarian things. Humanitarian aspects. For example,
there were refugee admissions. Right people could come here and
seek asylum and say, hey, I'm a refugee from a
certain place, So Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, where there were
(12:51):
immigrants coming from those countries and seeking this refuge and
those were like paused, many of them were revoked. By
the way right now is I don't know if you've
been following, they're in a ridiculously scary situation where the
gangs have taken over. And so to imagine like someone
(13:13):
fleeing from there, they're fleeing from a real hell, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Okay, so all that got paused.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Central American miners, family reunification paroles, safe mobility offices, all
this stuff. Like they've just put an end to all that,
a lot of the things that were in process. If
you had if you had your case under review, it's
like either indefinitely deferred or or terminated. So these these
were steps taken showing to me a lack of care, right, like,
(13:42):
we just don't care if you're not from here, I
don't care. We just don't care, which is also adding
to the fear because it also is not coming from
a place of like, gosh, we have reports that people
lost jobs in Tijuana or whatever, you know, whatever city,
and no, no, no, it's coming from a place of like,
we just don't want these people at all here, and
(14:05):
we will do anything and we don't care what age
they are or whatever. That's scary.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
It's not a very Christian thing to do.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh, definitely not a Christian thing to do, right, Like,
what would Jesus do? It's the opposite.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
He would strap on some body armor and grab a
gun and stand at the border and say fuck you,
stay out exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
You know, it's horrible.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I had a conversation not too long ago with someone
in my life, someone who's a relative actually, and we
were talking about the border and stuff like that, and
I I think I brought up that there was reports
of vigilantes going with their machine guns to stand there
and try to shoot people. And this person, who is
(14:47):
a Christian, said, well, yeah, good now. I was like,
these are families, like they could be shooting women, children. It'say, well,
they shouldn't become here illegally. And I couldn't believe that
this topic would distort their brain like that to say
something so against their firmly held Christian beliefs.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was. It was shocking to me.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And I pointed that out, I said, And later that
day they actually apologized for that thing.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Really they did? Wow? Yeah, what did they say?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
They just said, I, I'm.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Sorry, I didn't really something along the lines of if I
didn't really mean to say that.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
When you say what that they that it's okay to
shoot those people?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Wow? So but unexpected.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It was unexpected anyway, Hey, you just.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Thank them for apologizing because that's a huge deal.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It was a good moment of like, okay, you're not
that far gone into inhumanity.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Peeks, but close call. Like eikes. Even the fact that
we're having that discussion.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
All right, it's take a break, we get back more horribleness.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
What do you say, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
All right, we're back from the break. Continue the horribleness, Bertle.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, okay. So there are other movements that have been
happening thanks to revoke Social Security numbers for folks that
are you know, have questionable legal status. Daily finds as
it seizures for ignoring removal orders so basically like across
(16:29):
the board, we will remove you either. And in fact,
there's been sheriffs that have gone on TV say hey,
remove yourself, like they have an app that they can
go and say like I'm removing myself and they can
self deport. They want folks to leave now or they
will be taken, and of.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Course we saw what happened. Why would there be an app?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
They have a thing so that they can basically take them,
say that they're leaving, and I think maybe that lets
the authorities know where they are at.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So they can go. You know, it's it's I think
it's a little bit of a trick to try.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
To scare them into going to the app.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
But then now they know where they're at.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
What's the incentive.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Oh, the incentive is that maybe the authorities won't come
barging in knocking their door down, I guess.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
But if they're not there, then what's the diff I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, okay. And so then the other thing was, as
you've i'm sure seen all these centers, family detention centers
started getting reopened, private prison contracts going out, like there's
been a forty five billion dollar proposals for private prisons,
use of military basis Guantanamo, of course, use of the
(17:44):
the prison in what is in Salvador. Right, that was
a huge, horrible new development where not only are you
going to get put in prison or deported, you're actually
going to get sent to a prison in a different country.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I don't know if you're getting to this, but a
big tactic goal outcome that they're going for is not
just getting rid of people that they don't want in
this country, but also instilling fear in would be people
that would come. You know, So it's a terrorist tactic
(18:18):
to get people to be so afraid that they won't attempt.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I think you're absolutely right that fear is the normal
number one goal, and then expanding to not only well,
I'm an illegal person here, so I'm afraid, but actually
even if you are a citizen, because you know, they've
taken moves to say like, yeah, I think we can
revoke citizenship and we can do this.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So essentially, if like, if.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
You're not on our plan, if you're not with the party,
you should be afraid.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
There's been tons of reports of overcrowding, inadequate care, limited
legal access.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
There was the horrible situation in Florida where they created.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
The alligator Alca Trass, and one of the people in
the administration was quoted as saying that they were going
to be feeding the alligator. Sixty five million meals, sixty
five million being randomly the number of Latinos living in
this country.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
So when I hear stuff like that, I get worried.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
To be clear, sixty five million legal people in this country.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, well sixty five million.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
The estimate is that there's sixty five million Latino citizens,
green card holders, legal immigrancy.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
In this country.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So when I hear that, that sounds nazis that that
sounds like, oh okay, I see, so some of these
people actually just want a holocaust.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Referencing our previous deep dive that you led, the Neo
Nazi deep dive, I was confused as to why the
patrons voted for that topic to begin with. Overall, there
was like thirty other things, right, I mean, I get
how people would be interested, but it was the most
voted for topic at the time, and I was like, huh.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
And before looking.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Into it, it seemed to me that it was an
extremely fringe You know, you're always going to have the
white supremacistist, the KKK. But in doing the deep dive,
it became clear and evident that it's not only infused
in a lot of institutions and people. It's not just
a KKK. It's not just outwardly white supremacist individuals. There's
(20:27):
a lot of just below the surface, or whispered behind
closed doors, or even just flat out podcasters who are
you know, peddling neo Nazi slogans. Even doing the Hyle
Hitler salute, it illuminated something that I knew was around.
Of course, I know racism is here, but I didn't
(20:50):
realize just how much it was and how it's on
the rise in a lot of ways. You know, it's
appealing to a certain group of people not only to
be racist, which I understand, but to be specifically neo Nazi. Yeah,
to be specifically like promoting Hitler fascism.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
It's fucking bizarre.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I was equally shocked and dismayed, and through this process
in the last six months, definitely that stuff coming to light,
you know, and coming to light now in power. You know,
it's funny when we did that pretty sure that was
during the Biden administration right now, it's during this Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, when we did that, it was pre Elon Musk
Nazi salute.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And get And I understand that.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Some people are still debating whether it was an actual
Nazi salute, and you know, I can't know what was in.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, we can't know if Hitler was actually doing a
Nazi salute or well.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We can't know what was in his heart and mind.
But the conclusion that I came to about Elon Musk
was that of all people on the internet, he knows
the Nazi of course a thing really well because he's
a he's addicted to Twitter and I'm not using that
word lightly, and addicted to four Chan and all that stuff,
(22:10):
and so he lives in that trolly four chan eight
chance or a world. He absolutely knows what a Nazi
salute looks like and has undoubtedly practiced in the mirror,
you know, and knew what he was doing. Now is
he an actual Nazi, I don't know. But should he
have known better or was he doing something intentionally?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
You know?
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Again, and even if he was intending on doing a
Nazi salute, what was he trying to communicate?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
I don't know. Nothing? Good?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, Well, I in the height of ironies.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The folks that would claim that.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Oh no, he just didn't he didn't know better are
the same folks that will claim that he is playing
ninth dimensional chess at all times, running sixty companies in
his sleep, and that he's the ultimate genius of all time.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And he had lamped several overtly neo Nazi posts and
again we don't see that lightly. No Jews will not
replace us the great replacement theory. He's not like our
grandpa that doesn't understand the Internet, and he doesn't understand
the content. He knows the context form, but he's addicted
to that sort of shit. The fact that he's signal
(23:20):
amping at the fact that he is sympathetic to those
point of view points of view is it says something
about what's in his heart.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Then the Alien Enemies Act from seventeen ninety eight was
invoked to fast track Venezuelan removals. The Alien Enemies Act.
Are you familiar with this?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
No?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, I mean why would we? It's from seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It was meant to be like, hey, we have to
we have enemies in this country because guess what we
just had like a revolution and we independent size from
these other folk these and now we're talking about like
at a time and place where Okay, yeah, maybe there's
people trying to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, you're getting at like currently the administration is turning
to that, yeah, as justification.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Fee because they were saying the Venezuela and gangs are
taking over in our countries at risks.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So we got to invoke the Alien Enemies Act from
seventeen ninety eight to remove them.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Right, So the Supreme Court got involved and started putting
some constraints on this, but not enough in my opinion.
Immigration Court shake up. Judges fired directives to dismiss asylum
claims without hearings. So asylum is someone comes to the
border and says, hey, I'm fleeing, I need asylum. Okay,
(24:44):
so you enter a process. During the Biden administration, as
you may recall, they were trying to pass a bill
that would add a whole bunch of judges and a
whole bunch of funding to expedite those asylum claims. This
was defeated because Trump said, don't do it, because they
didn't want any progress made in that front because he
would it would be perceived as political game.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And to be clear, the funding for these systems wasn't
necessarily to let people in.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
It was to.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Give the experts, the officials, the ability to make a decision.
There would be a lot of people that would be
turned away. But what Trump wants is for that question
not even not even to come up right. So it's
not like, hey, well let's put more judges. No, you
know what, dismiss the claims.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
What's again points to that lack.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Of humanity, like we don't care who these people are,
what they're coming from, we don't care.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
We are an individual country, we're not a society.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
We don't care legal aid for on a company children
defunded despite and so like they defunded, the kids come
in to the court, they don't they're just little kids,
and there was a fund to provide them with legal aid.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Like yeah, yeah, take that away.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's like in human totally anti Christian right, Okay, student
visa revocations, we saw the situations where it was like, Okay,
you're speaking out against the administration or against something we
don't agree with, so we're gonna revoke your visa or
we're gonna threaten you to just remove you from the country.
(26:20):
They did an AI driven catch and revoke effort, so
they essentially put AI on a whole bunch of data
to look through and revoke, essentially trying to pull visas
from people based on just data that the later this
was reversed, but they tried to pull fifteen hundred visas
(26:42):
from people. Also, mandatory social media screening was widened. So
the other thing that they started doing was like checking
your Facebook, checking your Instagram, checking your posts, such a
Nazi movie kind of thing to do, like let's see
what you have posted in your I don't know what
accent that is, but imagine that's a Nazi accent. They
(27:03):
drafted a travel band that would affect forty three countries
delay green card processing.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It's essentially a full court press across all these areas,
the border, the visa process, the asylum process, travel from
different countries, as student visas, everything just like across the board.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
They also passed or the Executive Order fourteen one four
one six to zero sought to end birth right citizenship.
So this one started scaring a lot of folks as well,
like myself, where birthright citizenship is you know, time immemorial.
If you are born in this country, you are entitled
(27:47):
to be a citizen in this country. Unless there was
just a few exclusions when this When the birthright citizenship
came into being, there was a lot of debate, as
you can imagine, and there were folks at the time
senators that asked, but wait a minute, what about a
Chinese person. If a Chinese person was born here, would
they become a citizen? And the answer was yes, they
(28:08):
would like oh geez, and of course, because at the
time they wanted it to apply only for a limited
number of types of individuals. But this was fought and passed,
and it was passed to say, no, if you are
born in this country, you are entitled to birthright citizenship.
The only exceptions were if you were born from parents
(28:30):
that were known what do you call it, they were
at war with us basically, So in a situation where
they they're like at war, they're invading the country and
you're born, then that didn't count because you were born
from invaders.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
There was a couple of limitations like that, but they
were very obvious, like specifically things that yeah, I guess
we don't want this. But in every other case, you
were born here, here, So when they sought to end
the birthright citizenship sent a new alarm because it essentially
and of course the argument is like, yeah, well, well
but those the parents are here illegally, their children shouldn't
(29:08):
benefit from that. But at the same time, in the
same breadth, they were also starting to say, plus, we
also want to cancel citizenship for a lot of people. Right,
So that's when someone like me starts getting worried about
relatives I have who were naturalized. You know, they were
they had birthright citizenship. It's like, Okay. The other thing
is in another executive order to name English as the
(29:31):
official language, which normally, you know, normally and any other time,
if this had happened in the nineties or whatever, I
might have been like, oh, yeah, that's cool English, it's
the natural because I probably wouldn't understand the implications right,
But right now the implication is like, yeah, it's this
thing about borders and culture, right, we want to preserve
the culture.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And these are.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Always these dog whistles about like it is the it
is the supremacist stuff. We only want our people. We
want people to look like us, people to talk like us,
people have our culture. We don't want anything else. So
that's another one of those signals making English the official language.
You were saying something interesting, which is the in the
previous episode, you were talking about how when people came
(30:13):
to the country, one of the things is like, hey,
you know, we want to assimilate, right. And in the
song the Neil Diamond Song, there was that line about
like never look back, and the ominous implication might be
like you better assimilate, right. But that's always been sort
of a soft or not always I shouldn't say that,
but I mean, at least in the more recent time
(30:34):
when I came here and stuff, I always felt it
was a softer assumption.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
You see a lot of.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Communities where, you know, I have Asian friends like yourself.
I have other friends whose parents barely speak English and
they you know, I have Korean friends who when I
would go to their house, they would only be speaking Korean, right,
And I never thought, oh, I better report him to
the authorities, or it's just the thing, you know, and
like And in fact, I lament the fact that I
(31:00):
don't speak enough Spanish at home to my girls, you know,
because I want them to learn the language better.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
And I've been doing it more So this.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Kind of move is another thing that gives one pause like, oh, okay,
what is the intention behind that?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, what would that mean to make English the official language?
I assume it would mean that all publications from the
federal government would only be in English, for example. But
you can't have language police invading the Korean home and
telling them that they can't speak Korean in their house.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right. Again, It's one of those things that normally I'd
be like, huh, well, I guess that's weird. I mean,
why are you spending time on that?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
But fine, But in the context of everything, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I see where this is headed.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It's it's a part of a full court press of
white supremacy.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
The other thing is you might have heard about this
the Gold card.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Have you heard of how like they offer They haven't
enacted this, but the idea is that if you pay
five million, you would get this gold card visa that
would give you a legalization path, so essentially by your
citizenship with a lot of money, right, which again I'm
(32:13):
not no, Actually this one seems a little grotesque, but
I could see at different times in different context like hey,
if you're if you want to bring your business to
the country. We'll incentivize that will make it easier for
you to get citizenship or whatever, like okay, But in
the context of everything else, it's like, yeah, I get it.
You just want your little oligarch buddies, no matter who
they are, no matter what criminals they might be, to
(32:34):
come pay for the.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's just gross. Gross.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
So this is all everything I just read was from
an analysis from the first one hundred days. It's not
even like all the latest stuff. But this is what
is triggered communities like my community to be very afraid.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Let's take a break. The rest of this episode will
be for patrons of the podcast. You can listen to
this whole episode and all of our other deep dives. If
you become a patron, if you've been on the border line,
if you will, if you've been thinking about immigrating into patronage,
now is the time. Because we accept all.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
We accept all.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
Otherwise, please take care of yourself because you deserve it.
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